By Nightfall
by ibuzoo
Summary: Each time Tom's heart almost stops, like the clock that doesn't keep the time when she's back. As if it would try and gave them some privacy before he loses her again. It's like the time knows. His blood does too.


**o.**

Tom turns the stone three times in his hand.

* * *

**i.**

There's a coffin right before his eyes and he sees her body lying in utter peace, still beautiful in death, pale skin and red lips, black lace and satin covering her body, white roses between her delicate fingers.

_(white, always white, not red)_

He always thought Hermione would die by his own hands.

He always thought losing Hermione wouldn't affect him at all.

He was seriously mistaken.

_(he wastes no time, stumbles out of the vault, stumbles away from the ache in his heart)_

* * *

**ii.**

He loses his heart to a coffin made of vine and dragon heartstring.

* * *

**iii.**

Tom buries himself days in his private library, dark magic in the core of each book, some of them with every kind of spell you can think of and it's still not enough, no single word about resurrection, about the living dead and Tom is furious, rages through the room, throws journals off of the shelfs and tears pages out of tomes, setting them aflame but nothing stills his wrath.

It looks like a hurricane raged through his chamber but Tom doesn't care, sits in the middle of the aftermath while his anger radiates in waves from his form, hair a dark mess and despair clinging to his core.

Nobody enters the room, nobody dares.

* * *

**iv.**

He finds a journal with scrawled spells and old legacies talking about a Resurrection Stone, sends his Death Eaters out to search for it, desperate, too desperate.

He needs days to figure out that he wore it all along.

* * *

**v.**

_(he turns the stone three times and thinks it will be enough)_

* * *

**vi.**

Winter solstice, longest night of the year, they'll never have more time than tonight.

Tom waits until nightfall, watches out the window and if he was some primitive muggle he'd drink down the sun but like this he watches shadows slipping down the wall, waits. Then it's dark, pitch black and all the clocks in Riddle Mansion tick loudly, strike midnight and Tom breaths, mouth dry, dips the stone in a bottle of his blood, turns it three times, hopes it's enough.

There's a silver fume and between one second and the next, Hermione is there, standing in the pale moonlight with honey-brown locks and dark chocolate eyes. She smiles at him and there's sadness in her eyes and he notices but ignores it bluntly, relief washing the wrath out of his frame.

Tom breaths out.

* * *

**vii.**

She doesn't smell like fear or death and Tom is grateful.

* * *

**viii.**

There are rules, reversals of fortune and grisly claiming, like blood in a glass slipper, the vicious birds in the trees with their hooked beaks, and Tom knows them all, knows that he needs to give up on her when morning comes.

He does his research, reads about blood and what it'll take, all the old muggle fairy tales had it right, all the old stories about taking hearts, taking eyes and hands, voices and animal-by-day, human-by-night, what about teeth and knives in your feet, what else can you sacrifice?

He feeds the ring with his blood to keep her alive, not a shell, not the lifeless puppet that they're talking about in old tales.

The Grim Reaper is an atrocious beast and doesn't let his prey out of sight for very long so all Tom gets is one night a month.

_(one night is not nearly enough)_

* * *

**ix.**

_(it takes so much more than anyone ever thought)_

* * *

**x.**

The clocks tick louder as dawn approaches, the sun is about to break and Tom looks up just as she vanishes into thin air.

* * *

**xi.**

He spends the month killing the ones who took her from him in the first place.

_(his knuckles are swollen when he grab his wand)_

The rest of the month, he keeps waiting.

* * *

**xii.**

Hermione laughs and Tom tightens his fingers over her wrist, feels her pulse strong and synchronised with his own.

She still disappears when morning comes.

* * *

**xiii.**

He saves his memories in a pensieve, of them together, of her laughter, of her voice, and sometimes he feels as if those memories are far too real, not the usual greyish veil over the reflection before his eyes. She seems vivid and fiery, passionate to the bones and it's as if her elation lights up his mind, colours it.

One night (the wrong one), his patience runs too thin and he hears her voice even without a pensieve to remind him. He sits on the cold wooden floor in the library, flames in the fireplace giving just enough light for his eyes to see and there's a bowl of his blood right in front of him, it stands there waiting. He dunks the ring in the bowl, turns it three times.

It doesn't work.

Furiously, he throws the ring in the fire.

* * *

**xiv.**

_(when his temper cools down he takes the ring out of burnt red coals, slips it on his finger and ignores the flesh that burns under the glowing gold)_

* * *

**xv.**

As soon as the sun dies, falling below the horizon into its grave, it's the night that calls, the shadows, the darkness and the clock stops.

Time stops but the sun doesn't.

It comes up with morning and Hermione's gone.

* * *

**xvi.**

_(it's still not enough)_

* * *

**xvii.**

Tom wants to destroy something, feels the beast raging for blood and he wants to grind everything into dust, crucio someone until his brain just stops, line them up and sacrifice them just to stay sane, just to keep waiting. He waits for someone to make a mistake but his Death Eaters keep it low, do exactly as he wishes and that's even worse.

In the end it's Wormtail who needs to bite the dust, screaming and coiling in agony, in severe pain, eyes red from the tears he shed while begging for his life. His bones are cracking in the fire Tom put on him but it doesn't still his need, doesn't feed his hunger.

There's still the bitter taste of her missing frame with every step he takes.

* * *

**xviii.**

It's summer, the solstice circling close, the shortest night of the year.

He squats in the library and eats by candlelight because he's slowly becoming nocturnal, starts to see better in the dark and the bowl of blood rests still between his legs, waits in silence until the sun finally goes to sleep.

He thinks about what he'll say, what they'll talk about in the shortest night of the year but as soon as he turns the stone three times, the words die on his lips.

_(they aren't meant to say goodbye)_

They're curling up around each other, his hands roaming over her body and he's breathing her scent in, nose in the crook of her neck and he leaves kisses on her face, her eyes flaring and the candles jump in response.

When his lips fit over hers it's the sweetest sin he ever tasted.

_(they taste like sunlight)_

* * *

**xix.**

He hunts without rest and Bellatrix doesn't look at him when he sways out of the library the next day, pale and eyes too dark from the lack of sleep, from the loss of blood and Abraxas doesn't look at him either, when he loses his temper again, kills people and tortures them until they lose their minds.

He kills and burns and crucios everyone that gets in his way and it feels good, power vibrating through his body, feeling his veins with the blood he sacrifices once a month to feed his heart.

* * *

**xx.**

Hermione lies in his arms, book in her hands and she's reading spells in a long forgotten language that he taught her some years ago and suddenly there's a shudder and she says, "It's cold in here."

Tom wants to ask if it's cold in the other world, in the world of the dead that he fears so much but the nights grow finally longer and they need to savour every moment, every second.

He wraps his arms around her and keeps silent.

* * *

**xxi.**

_(his heart slows down each time he bleeds, but it's still not enough)_

* * *

**xxii.**

"I can feel it," she whispers one night, traces the creases of his hand with her fingers, draws a line down to his wrists and there's no scar (a simple healing charm) but she kisses it still, lets her lips on his skin longer than needed, murmurs, "when you cut yourself."

He loses himself in her eyes and his answer feels strangely light from his lips when he says, "I don't feel it anymore."

* * *

**xxiii.**

Each time Tom's heart almost stops, like the clock that doesn't keep the time when she's back. As if it would try and gave them some privacy before he loses her again.

It's like the time knows.

His blood does too.

* * *

**xxiv.**

Tom turns the stone three times in his hand.


End file.
